Sheffield Wednesday: Fan Preview - Can The Owls bounce back after two shocking performances?

In what can only be described as a horrific week for Wednesday, we have lost two huge games and now find ourselves fading away from the promotion-chasing pack.

The game at Sunderland yet again showed the lack of fight to get back in a game after going behind, leading to us crumbling again and falling 5-0. We all hoped that was a one off poor result, but with optimism for victory at Shrewsbury, we once again shot ourselves down with an appalling display leading to a 1-0 defeat.

To make matters worse, Wolves recalled Owls winger Theo Corbeanu this week and sent him to MK Dons in hope of more game time and a playing position further up field. This is incredibly damning for Wednesday as he was consistently one of our only creative sparks when played, and that was even when he was played out of position.

This week has caused serious damage to our promotion, or even play off, hopes and it will take something huge now to fix it.

For a while, I defended the use of the 5-3-2 formation, but now I believe we simply have to change formation back to a four-back. We have talented wingers, such as Olamide Shodipo, whom haven’t been able to show it and have been fairly poor, but in my opinion this is due to their lack of freedom given having been constrained to a wing back role.

Nobody can say Shodipo and other wingers have been good enough, but he got 11 goals and 3 assists for Oxford last season, that if we get these kind of players in their actual forward roles, and give them freedom to express themselves, they can be a deadly weapon for us.

Unfortunately, the current system is holding them back massively and has already seen one big player for us leave and go to League One rivals, so it is key, in my opinion, to switch to a formation now that suits our attacking talents more. I would suggest either 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1, but most likely 4-3-3 with options lacking this weekend as it does seem that, at the moment, the game this weekend may come too soon for Dunkley and Shodipo.

This weekend’s game at home to Plymouth concerns me. We have already been beaten 3-0 twice by them this season and I fear that, unless we perform like we know we can, such as against MK Dons and Sunderland (Home), we could be in for a similar story.

Being at Hillsborough though, I do have optimism that we can get one back on Plymouth, especially if we do change our system to fit our player’s styles.

Now more than ever it is crucial that we pick up some results and there is no room for error against Plymouth who we could certainly be fighting with for a play-off spot. If we lose this one, I really do fear for any hopes of promotion through play offs.

Line-Up I would go with: (4-3-3) Peacock Farrell, Hunt, Hutchinson, Brennan, Palmer, Luongo, Bannan, Adeniran, Windass, Mendez-Laing, Gregory

Score Prediction: SWFC 1-1 Plymouth